Con: Scientists Should Engage in Policy, Carefully
By: Matthew Innes (GIS)
A scientist should not be an advocate of policy but facilitate information that they have developed or studied to aid in policy making. As a citizen I can see how scientists do not consider economic, social, and ethical policy decisions when studying or solving a problem. Kathy Sykes a professor of sciences and society at University of Bristol quotes Martin Rees, “They should accept that on the economic, social and ethical aspects of any policy they speak as citizens and not as experts.” I completely agree with this idea that Rees has because for example when a cure for an illness is found then the economic aspects are given to larger corporations to figure out, but the actual scientists do not deal with the economic and social aspects of it.
Sykes believes that scientists can become involved when the government policy makers deny the facts, such as the Bush administration and they denied global warming and climate change, so scientists had to get involved and advocate policy in order to help the larger population. She agrees with Rees that scientists have a responsibility to engage on policy issues, but there are limits. Also there are four types of classifications for scientists, “pure scientist, science arbiters, issue advocate, or honest brokers.” The pure scientist is where I see the majority of scientists where they study and develop a new theory and present it with a paper that sits for others to use whenever needed.
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ReplyDeleteI agree in that scientist are not entirely knowledgeable about as aspects of life, however, i had a minor problem with one of your examples:
ReplyDelete"... for example when a cure for an illness is found then the economic aspects are given to larger corporations to figure out, but the actual scientists do not deal with the economic and social aspects of it."
If we are building off the premise that scientists ought not advocate policy, such as medical policy, because they may produce biased information that the solution of asking CORPORATIONS or, in this example, HMOs and big Pharm to handle the economics and expect that they do not produce biased results is ironically sickening.
If the argument is that scientist are simply too uninformed to make good decisions than I ask who is both knowledgeable on research and policy? Legislators? Should MDs go into Politics for this reason? Ron Paul 2016.
The New York Times released a piece, "Why Don’t Americans Elect Scientists?" and found that out of our 435 reps we had ONE physicist, chemist, and microbiologist, six engineers and less than 12 with medical training.
And finally, should scientist only get involved with politicians DENY facts or simply not act on them? Is denial worse than neglect?
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